Buy A GM Car Now as Tempting Incentives

Should I buy a GM car now? GM is offering some tempting sales incentives, including zero-percent financing and/or cash rebates, on many of its models, including ones that we recommend. And with slow auto sales and too much inventory, dealers are ready to negotiate. So, it’s likely that you could get a very good deal during this restructuring period.

In addition to advertised customer incentives, automakers often provide behind-the-scenes dealer incentives. Knowing about these can help you to negotiate a lower price. Consumer Reports’ New Car Price Reports give you a list of all national and regional incentives for a particular model, including the hard-to-find holdback amounts, and the CR Bottom Line Price, which factors in all those to give you a good starting point for negotiating the vehicle’s price. Dealer sales incentives can also be found at various auto-pricing Web sites.

It’s important to remember that any deal is only as good as the vehicle you’re buying. We recommend that you thoroughly research the performance, reliability, safety, owner cost, and owner satisfaction of any model you’re considering. Subscribers to ConsumerReports.org have access to our Ratings in all of those areas.

Several recent GM models have done well in our testing and are very competitive in their classes. This includes the Chevrolet Malibu, Cadillac CTS, and GM’s quartet of three-row, crossover SUVs (Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia, and Saturn Outlook). All except for the Malibu, however, have shown below-average reliability in their first years.

Overall, you need to balance a good deal with the risk of greater depreciation, the chance of reduced consumer protections (see What If I Have a Claim Against GM?), and the chance that your local dealership could go out of business in coming months. (GM recently notified about 1,100 of its dealers that it will not renew their franchise contracts in October 2010. This will leave the company with about 5,000 dealerships in the U.S., still well more than Toyota’s 1,600 or Honda’s or Nissan’s 1,200.)

What brands and models will still be available?
GM plans to trim its number of U.S. brands from eight to four. It plans to retain Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC, while phasing out or selling Hummer, Pontiac, Saab, and Saturn. GM has said that it will not rebrand any vehicles from those divisions to be sold by the remaining divisions.

Pontiac is expected to be phased out by the end of 2010. GM has been meeting with parties interested in buying Hummer, Saab, and Saturn. But since no final details have been announced, the future of those models remains uncertain.

GM has also said that it will discontinue several of its high-performance models by the end of this year, including the Chevrolet Cobalt SS sedan, HHR SS, and Impala SS, the Cadillac STS-V, and the Pontiac G6 GXP.